


turn against

by wordswithdragons



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, bc bby boy has very clear ideas on betrayal & i love him for it, even if this is very much set immediately after 3x01 so we don't get to the ghosting but, insp by callum saying 'even when her own ppl turn against her', maybe another time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:54:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22262926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswithdragons/pseuds/wordswithdragons
Summary: Rayla and Callum reflect on betrayal and abandonment, set after 3x01.
Relationships: Callum/Rayla (The Dragon Prince), past callum/claudia - Relationship
Comments: 16
Kudos: 222





	turn against

**Author's Note:**

> just a reminder before diving in that this from callum's pov and that he doesn't know everything the audience does, ie. that soren was the only one given the mission to kill the princes and claudia doesn't know, or more light shed on her actual motivations, etc. he's working with the information he has and the complicated feelings that follow. that is all.

They're halfway through the long stretch of canyons when night begins to fall and Rayla relents that it may be time to make camp. Callum's feet are sore and grateful when she finally settles on an appropriate spot in the crook of the canyon walls, partially sheltered from the wind that continues to blow through. The wind that saved their lives earlier today. They're close enough to the forest beyond, too, grass and trees growing on the rock plateaus high above them, that Rayla has been able to collect some logs and twigs while they walked. Sparse kindling, maybe, but it looks like enough to him at least; although Callum has never gone camping before, until he was suddenly camping all the time, as their only option since leaving. But he likes to think he's grown somewhat decent at learning survival skills over the past two and a half weeks from paying close attention to Rayla and how she's amazing, at well, just about everything.

After everything that's happened today—almost being burnt alive, running from Sol Regem, seeing those rocks fall on Rayla and for a sickening moment he'd thought—Callum closes his eyes for a moment before he sits down and opens his sketchbook, the action automatically reassuring. Flips through his pages, seeing the last one he'd done being Rayla when he'd sat on the cave cliff side. Not wanting to dwell on nearly having lost her _again_ and the illness that'd followed, he flips back further until he finds a sketch of a grinning Ezran feeding a jelly tart to a grumpy Bait. A pang hits him. As much as he loves (misses) his brother, he's a little glad Ez isn't here; he's probably safer in Katolis than in Xadia, after all. Especially if everything is going to be as nasty and death defying as Sol Regem.

He thumbs through the pages absentmindedly, looking up when Rayla lets out a frustrated grunt. "What is it?" Callum asks. She's holding two twigs in her hands, kneeling by their in progress but currently unlit campfire, and looking rather put out.

She sits back further onto her heels, an adorable pout tugging at her mouth—though she'd probably kill him if he called anything about her adorable out loud. "I don't think I grabbed enough kindling," she admits, resigned, and then goes to rise. "I'll have to head back out."

Alarm catches in his throat. It's twilight now, but it'll be dark soon, and he likes the idea of Rayla going out alone at night (even if she is a Moonshadow elf) even less than he likes the idea of waiting alone (save Zym, but he's a _baby_ dragon, so) in the dark for her to come back. They've had too many close calls the past three days for him to want to leave her side even in broad daylight, anyway.

"Wait." An idea strikes him, emboldened when he glances down and sees which drawing he's landed on. Without preamble, Callum seizes the edge of the page and rips it out from his sketchbook's spine, holding it out to her next. "Here. Use this instead."

Rayla hesitates to take it. "But it's..."

An old drawing of Claudia in the castle gardens, a book in her lap and a soft expression on her face, one strand of long hair curled around her finger. He still remembers the day he drew it, dreamy eyed by how picturesque the image was and how pretty she looked. Now it only makes his stomach feel empty, all the butterflies gone, even if he's all too aware of their absence.

He gives the paper a little shake. "Two birds with one stone," he insists, before he can wonder if elves have that saying too. "I'd burn ones of Viren too, if I had them." Despite the high mage being his father's best friend, Callum had never felt comfortable to draw Viren. He'd trusted the man, sure, but there'd always been something a little unnerving about him too. _And now you know why,_ Callum thinks darkly.

Rayla takes the drawing after a moment's pause and then crumples it up, before sticking it under one log. "Thanks," she says, quiet, and tucking her hair behind her ear again.

She doesn't do it often, he notices, but here it is, twice in one day. He'll have to draw it later.

Rayla gets the fire going and he tears out another picture of Claudia, collecting plants in the gardens, and crumples it up too, and tosses it in. It catches quickly, old streaks of charcoal turning to streaks of ash.

"She really hurt you," Rayla says softly.

Callum barely looks up. He doesn't think he has to respond. Rayla had seen the aftermath of everything, after all. Claudia telling him about Harrow. The chains. Him, begging, and her refusing to listen. The way he'd stared off behind him until Rayla reminded him to look away at what they still had: Ezran, and Zym, each other. A future.

In the silence he can vaguely sense Rayla wrestling with herself, before she says, "It's okay, you know, if you miss her."

Callum's eyebrows shoot up. It takes everything in him not to straight up balk. "What? No, I don't—" He grits his teeth, looking back into the fire. "I don't _miss_ her. She—" He swallows, a hard lump in his throat, because it's true, and even that stings a little. If he missed her, there'd be sadness, maybe regret.

But there isn't. All he feels now is resentment and, at its peak, rage.

Claudia _used_ him. Took his trust and his affection and his cautious, wide-eyed hope and sank each one into his back like a knife. That's bad enough on its own, he thinks. For her to lie twice over, and seem sorry, and then turn right back around and ignore him when he's pleading with her. But the further back he goes, the more reasons he finds to be angry, as though now his rose tinted glasses were off, there was no holding back.

She'd known assassins were coming to the castle to kill his father and hadn't told him. She'd known about the Egg—what ultimately ended up sparing Ezran's _life_ and only because Rayla was different than her troupe—and had lied to him, to the king, about its existence. Callum doesn't want to think about how things could have turned out differently, doesn't want to wonder whether he indeed would've died in Ezran's place (if Rayla would've gone through with it, but he doesn't know that either, and it seems minimal, somehow) and if that would've been enough to save his brother, or if they both would've died.

Claudia had advanced on Ezran, Rayla had told him later, her eyes glowing, hand outstretched for Zym. She'd tried to kill Rayla three more times, _twice_ even after knowing Rayla was _his friend_ , and Claudia _hadn't cared_. Had only bothered to ask if there was something between them. _What? Me and Rayla—_

She was gauging, Callum thinks now, numbly. Trying to see if his crush was there and still viable. Still something to use.

Callum shuts his eyes and breathes. Once he reopens them, he finds Rayla's gaze on him, steady and patient.

"On the bright side," she says, and that gets him, because usually he's the overly optimistic one, but she's trying for his sake, and he appreciates it. Enough to uncurl from himself and shift a little closer to her "I don't think they're following us anymore. They'd have to get past Sol Regem, and somehow find the Moonstone path. There's no way they're doing that after Soren's injury."

She'd told him that too, with a slight frown. It had happened after he'd passed out. _Looked pretty bad, but I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention._ Because she was focusing on getting mostly him (and Ezran) out of there alive.

When his silence doesn't let up, though, Rayla's hand finds his shoulder. The weight is warm and small and familiar by now, reassuring. Turning him toward her.

Words leak out of his mouth, unsteady and unfocused, but he knows she'll catch them and listen anyway. Even if the words and his breath shudder out far more slowly.

"I just—we could've lost everything, if I—"

_Do you understand? We'll lose everything._

_But it was a trap. He wanted there to be an accident._

Rayla's voice is soft. "Callum—"

"If I hadn't listened to you, she—they would've killed you. They would've taken Zym." The lump in his throat _burns_. "They might've killed me and Ezran."

How much had his two oldest friends really known? The date just a big distraction until Claudia felt too guilty and told him the truth about Harrow? Soren had lied and Rayla hadn't. What if Soren really had been trying to kill Ezran? Had Claudia been on it too? If the people he'd grown up with—the people he trusted—had been willing to kill another friend of his, and drag him and his brother back in chains, then what else were they willing to do? Claudia had seem relieved he was okay, in the rain, by the dragon, but was that all just a ruse, too? An attempt at salvaging, a first step towards another betrayal?

Callum didn't know. Doesn't know. And he likely never will. Will likely (hopefully?) never see them again. But it tears at him, the knives twisting deeper.

Rayla's fingers fold over his shoulder, squeezing. Her voice is firm. "I wouldn't have let that happen."

"But—"

"Callum, you _did_ listen. You trusted me when it mattered the most. I wish it hadn't had to go that way, but it did, and you made the right call." Rayla's expression softens a little from her own thoughtfulness, maybe. "Sometimes I still can't believe you did."

He smiles a little. "You've put your faith in me with very little reason to a bunch of times," he says. Shrugs his shoulders when her hand moves away, even if it seems to linger. "Figured it was time I returned the favour."

It's a bit blasé, and he knows it, but there's no way to really describe it. All he remembers is the weight of his bag in his hands and Rayla's eyes at his back, and understanding her. Knowing that after she'd held him while he cried, while they silently swore themselves to not telling Ezran the terrible truth, that he could rely on her. That she would always have his best interests at heart, that she wouldn't fight against him unless it mattered.

 _You and I don't have that_ yet _._

That it was time to decide that they could. That no matter how wrong it felt, not trusting her would've felt worse.

Finally, though, it seems like he can admit what's been eating at him, what he wants to gnaw or burn away, the last traces of his drawings crumbling in the fire. "It's just—if they could do that—if she could do that—" Something tears at his throat, too. "Did I ever really matter to her at all? I—I even thought she might _like_ me and—I just feel _so stupid_ for ever thinking—"

"You are not stupid," Rayla says sharply, cutting him off. "You can be a little dumb, sometimes, Callum, but you're not _stupid_. If anything, Claudia's the stupid one. You're an amazing friend and you trusted her and she threw you away. You didn't deserve that. You don't deserve that."

When he sniffles and wipes at his eyes, dragging up his scarf, Rayla draws her knees to her chest and rests her chin on top of them. She encircles her shins with one arm, her other staying along her side, her fingers faintly catching his. There to take, if he wants to.

"Besides," she says, quiet, "if it's any consolation, I know how you feel."

"You do?"

Strong, amazing, resilient _Rayla_ knows how this—being discarded and abandoned and betrayed—feels? Indignation on her behalf flares in his chest and burns away some of his grief for the friends he lost, if they were ever really _friends_ , either.

"I was little when my parents left to join the Dragonguard," Rayla says, and he does his best not to inhale too sharply. She hasn't talked about her parents since that day on the shore. "I missed them, of course, but everyone told me what an honour it was. _My_ parents, chosen for the Dragonguard. So I believed them. I was so proud. _So proud,_ " she repeats in a croak. "It was okay that they weren't raising me, right? If they were honourable, if they were doing their duty. And then—" Rayla hunches and closes her eyes and can't go on, so he does it for her.

"They left," he finishes. She gives a miserable nod and finds space to breathe.

"They left _me_ because of their duty, and then they left that, so—I guess I was never very important to them, either."

"Well I'll never leave you," he vows, seizing her hand and holding it tightly.

The corners of Rayla's mouth twitch, even if she's going to correct him, most likely. "Callum..."

"Nope, can't talk me out of it, it's a promise," he says, meeting her gaze. "I'm never gonna leave you. Because, well—" He thinks of her speech today to Sol Regem. He's my friend. My best friend. It shouldn't be so hard to say it back, right? "You're important to me," he says. "You know that, right?"

A smile spreads over her face, small but real. "I know," she says, gripping his hand back. Her eyes turn steely with resolve. "And I'll never turn against you either."

It seems impossible that he ever doubted her, when now trusting and believing her feels like the easiest thing in the world. He squeezes and lets their hands rest back down on the ground. "I know. But, uh, good."

She lets out a slight snort and slips her hand out of his. Wraps both arms around her knees, partially hiding her face behind them for some reason. Then again, it's not like her to be especially emotionally open, never mind about her past, he supposes. Particularly not without him having to fight for it.

"And it's not stupid," Rayla says quietly, and he can see the hint of a smile curling her lips, "that someone would like you, Callum." She clears her throat. "You're very likeable."

His cheeks warm. It's suddenly very hard not to smile. "Oh. Uh—thanks."

"Don't mention it."

And he doesn't, because he isn't sure what to do with it yet, but he thinks— _hopes_ —that one day he will, and he'll get to show her another drawing (her, bold, beautiful, strong) that he'll never burn.


End file.
